In the coming weeks West Tisbury school leaders and town officials will meet to tackle a growing problem with unanticipated repairs to the West Tisbury elementary school whose price tag has now climbed to nearly $1.2 million.

And there is no clear plan yet about who will pay for it — the school district, the town, or some combination of the two.

Can you guess the two biggest countries in the Western Hemisphere that were born around the same time, colonized by Europeans, share a history of slavery and indigenous people, and are both democracies? Here’s a hint: the largest community abroad of one of these countries lives here in New England.

Brazil and the United States may have more in common than you thought.

After a heated debate drew passionate pleas from both sides, Edgartown voters said no to leaving the Martha’s Vineyard Commission at a special town meeting Tuesday night, indefinitely postponing an article that would have taken the first steps to withdraw from the regional land use commission.

A total of 305 registered voters packed the Old Whaling Church for the special town meeting led by longtime moderator Philip J. Norton Jr.

Martha’s Vineyard renters and mortgage-holders are under extraordinary financial pressure, with a majority shelling out more than 30 per cent of their household income on housing, new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show.

Census figures based on samples taken from 2005 to 2009 were released on Tuesday. The numbers take in both boom and bust years in the American economy, suggesting they may spruce up the worst of the recession’s effects.

There was no triumphalism about Dan Wolf’s first visit with the Democratic party faithful of the Vineyard after he won his state senate seat last month. Quite the reverse.

The first day of winter is next Tuesday, and early morning will see a lunar eclipse. The moon will pass through the earth’s shadow after midnight. The total eclipse, when the moon is completely covered by the earth’s shadow, will be from 2:41 to 3:53 a.m.

A Scrooge No More

From Art Railton’s Just a Thought, of December 16, 1988:

About this time each December I begin to wonder: Is Christmas worth it? Frazzled and frantic, with a long list of things still undone, presents still not bought, cards still not written, the tree to put up, I’m tempted to chuck it all in. Bah, humbug!

How did Christmas get to be so hectic? Why not go back to the “good old days,” the way Christmas used to be?

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Winter officially begins on Tuesday, and the temperature has jumped around lately almost as much as the Energizer bunny. Warm, spring-like one day, then cold and raw another day. We had a snow flurry Monday morning and the temperature was a frosty 16 degrees on Wednesday. Tuesday also marks the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. So, think positively: the days will be getting a tiny bit longer and seed catalogs have begun to arrive in the mail.

HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

When we left off last Friday in this first-ever cookbook cliff-hanger, the Linda Jean’s-sponsored favorite recipes, assembled by Robin Ayers, LJ wait staff and patrons, we’d just finished up with appetizers and soups and salads, and anything could have happened in this intervening week — earthquake, flood, all the bankers of Wall Street taking off in a Titanic-sized balloon (hooray!) — before we got to vegetables and side dishes. So here we go:

NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

I know the kind of person who would do this is not intelligent enough to read my column, or, in fact, a newspaper, but thanks a lot to the jerk who dumped a car battery on my Eastville Beach, right at one of the fence entrances as the parking lot turns to beach. Someone has marked it with a large feather. Any chance one of our town, or Oak Bluffs town, services can remove this before it starts leaking into the environment?